Anti-meth e-mail on way to college students

Posted: Friday, December 01, 2006

ATLANTA - Soon, every college student in the state will open up an e-mail from the school administration chock full of gruesome photos of drug addicts with brown teeth, open sores and vacant stares. It carries a blunt message: "Meth kills."

For some students, like University of Georgia junior Dylan Severens, 20, from Arnoldsville, the images are persuasive.

"I'd say seeing an ad like this would definitely turn me away from using meth because just look at their faces," Severens said. "You definitely don't want to look like that. The scabs and the rotten teeth, that's pretty disgusting."

But for others, one scary message won't be a deterrent.

Percy Croffie, a 22-year-old UGA senior from Athens, is among the skeptics.

"The e-mail really wouldn't affect me that much," Croffie said. "I don't see how they are going to be that effective because if you're already in college and trying meth, then you're not going to stop just because of an e-mail."

State and federal officials know they'll need more than a single message, but they see it as a start.

Thursday, they announced the initiative at a Capitol news conference with college presidents, prosecutors, drug agents and agency heads. It is the state's approach to a challenge U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales issued to every state on National Methamphetamine Awareness Day.

"This is the perfect model of the collaboration that's needed in Georgia to solve this," said Becky Vaughn, president of the Georgia Council on Substance Abuse.

Meth use is a big problem in Georgia. Backyard meth labs have been replaced by a flood of the drug brought in by Mexican immigrants, said U.S. Attorney David Nahmias. The state is one of the critical distribution hubs in the country, supplying south to Miami and north to New York.

Anyone seeking relief from a cold this fall has encountered the impact of a pair of state and federal laws that have dried up the mom-and-pop meth labs by requiring a signature from anyone buying cold medicine used to make the illegal stimulant. The number of meth labs discovered in the state dropped from a peak of 484 in 2004 to just 137 this year. That drop coincided with the rise in imported meth from Mexico.

Meth use in Georgia is five times the national average, according to Sherri Strange, an agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

But a report issued by the White House late in the day after the news conference showed a 26 percent decline in the number of positive results on workplace drug tests since the federal law took effect compared to the same period last year.

Still, experts worry that misconceptions are fueling that usage, especially among the college-age crowd who see meth as a way to stay up to concentrate while studying or enhance sexual pleasure - and no riskier than the speed their parents took.

"There are no recreational meth users," Strange said. "The first hit and you're hooked."

While meth hasn't become the drug of choice for Georgia college students yet, experts worry that its escalating popularity soon will spread to campuses. Nahmias also realized that e-mails provided an easy way to reach all 300,000 students.

When he asked, he got complete acceptance from the heads of the state's public and private colleges. Each has agreed to send a copy of the e-mail to all of their students, but no student information will be shared with prosecutors.

"We are happy to assist in spreading the word," said Harold Wade, president of Atlanta Metropolitan College.